Friday, August 03, 2007

Moose loose aboot this hoose!

I got in late last night after doing Radio 5 live Friday 'Up All Night' to find a large brown mouse sitting outside the front door. I waved my foot at him, to shoo him away and he casually walked about a yard away and then hid behind a recycling box. Not very effectively, I could still see him peeping at me and twitching his whiskers. J opened the front door and we hugged, and I came in and we shut the door behind us. And the mouse ran in too, but we didn't see him.

Later on we were sitting on the sofa watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and we suddenly saw a slim tail, waving, on the bookshelf, then disappearing behind the sofa. We jumped up and pulled the sofa to one side. No mouse.

'Get Miff!' I shouted. 'It's her moment! Come on fatso! Mouse time!'

Miff is on yet another diet. She doesn't like being on a diet, and is constantly whinging and collapsing on the floor pathetically, and so we assumed she would be thrilled to get her claws on some protein.

Miff was discovered on the bed, paws crossed, eyes closed, like a fat puddle of tabby fur. She did not seem very pleased to be removed and plonked in the sitting room (where the mouse had been spotted) with instructions to get on the case.

She sniffed about and then started to lash her tail excitedly. J and I waited for her to spring into action, eyes darkening, tail rigid, transformed from placid moggy into killing machine. But after a few minutes she gave up and sauntered over to her bowl to look for food. There was no food, so she threw herself on the floor dramatically and let out a long sigh.

We ignored her theatrics, as the vet had told us to do, and carried on watching TV.

A few moments later, there was a commotion behind the sofa. Claws skittering, and a hissing noise. Then thundering feet sprinting down the hall. We leapt up again.

'Go, Miffler!' I shouted excitedly. ' Well done! Get that mouse!'

'Oh, for God's sake', said J, watching the scene in the hall.

'What?' I asked.

The cat was running flat out, ears back, down the hall . The mouse was streaking down the hall too, heading for the bedroom, and freedom, through the open French windows into the yard.

But the laws of nature had been shamefully inverted. The cat was running in front of the mouse. Miff was running away as the mouse chased after her. They both disappeared into the garden. The mouse went left, under the garden gate and into the street, and the cat ran under the garden table, where she sat down heavily, and began licking her paws.

'Your cat is rubbish', J told me, as he headed back inside in disgust.

'She caught a mouse before', I said, defending Miff.

'No, Rachel, she found a half dead baby mouse and sat on it and hummed at it for three hours. You had to finish it off' said J.

'Well, she's ill. She has a temperature, remember,' I pointed out.' I've just had to lash out £100 at the vet to get her tablets'.

'She's crap', said J.' She's an embarassment. She saw a mouse and she ran away and hid'

Later on, Miff put on a great performance of sniffing about behind the sofa again, looking extra-diligent and alert.

You know, maybe, just maybe, Miff just needs a bit of love and compassion, Jay. So there!

BTW, we got out cats with the specific purpose that they would be working cats. I thought the trick to achieve that would be to keep them a bit hungry.

We then read that fed cats are actually better hunters. Who knows? They like being outdoors and every once in a while, I catch them "playing" with their food. Biddy and Seamus know the rules: Don't bring it in the house.

The apartment block I live in has mice. I've been slowly blocking access routes alongside pipes through floors etc but one of the main pipes goes floor to ceiling in the bathroom. I was pretty sure some mice were moving about on the floor above, knocking some bits down, but I could not reach the hole to block it without buying some new ladders.

This morning it was confirmed - laying dead on the floor was a mouse. I have visions of it scuttling along above, missing its footing and falling through the hole to hit the ground hard.

Given that this was pre-coffee and I was running late, the tiny corpse is still there. I was not really in the mood to pick it up this morning, so left me a nice task for later ;)

Hate to agree but cats are over rated as mouse killers. Get a terrier, vicious bastards and after they kill they take great pride in strutting up to you and looking smug with this look that says "Look what I just wasted" written across their face.

Oh and they do that with part of the remains in their jaws, the rest they leave laying about the house to found at about 2Am when you least expect to come across it in bare feet!

One of the other blogs I read has a "Pacifist Cat". I think yours is also a Pacifist... My Tonkinese cat is lovely and sometimes brings me mice from outside (sigh!), but is no good at catching things indoors - probably too well fed.Your cat looks very nice and cuddly; I think this is more important than hunting (but then I guess we don't have a lot of mice).

I had a feeder mouse escape before I could get it into our snake's terrarium. It ran around for WEEKS! Finally, it ran outside. But this meant I had to get another mouse for our hungry snake. Well, he can't have been that hungry, because he left it alone, and was even pestered by it trying to use him as a ladder to escape. He finally killed it, but did not eat it. I'm procrastinating about removing the dehydrated little fur-ball....

Never mind a mouse trap and cheese, they like chocolate biscuits. I caught a family of 7. Rocky did try his best but he could not get into tight spaces. Nevertheless, there were a couple or so which the mousetraps did not quite finish off and Rocky pounced on these with glee and completed the job.